


Verse, So Barren of New Pride

by Araine



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Breakup, College, Community: dai_stiho, F/M, OFC - Freeform, Sonnets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-14
Updated: 2011-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Araine/pseuds/Araine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, people fall apart from each other; how they fit back together is the hard part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Verse, So Barren of New Pride

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the inimitable Reading Redhead, who beta-ed this at the last minute, and had many many invaluable suggestions. Without her, this would not be the same.
> 
> The title comes from Shakespeare's 76th sonnet. The second sonnet to make an appearance in this fic is Shakespeare's 14th. The last is my own.

“I’ll be back soon,” Nita said, pulling her purse over her shoulder and walking towards the door of her dorm room. Nita’s new roommate looked up from the book that she was halfway through, bending the spine in the process. “I won’t be too long, but if you want to go to sleep then just turn the lights off.”

“You don’t want to take a shower?” Allison – already used to Nita’s schedule – asked.

“I’ll take one in the morning,” Nita said. “I promised somebody I’d meet them after my first day was done.”

“Oh? Your boyfriend?”

Nita’s smile pulled wryly at the edge of her lips. “Something like that.” She slipped out of the door, before Allison could start inquiring as to how she was meeting her boyfriend when she had moved out-of-state for college. She hadn’t yet decided what – if anything – she was going to tell her roommate about wizardry, but that was not a conversation to have during her first week of college.

She walked briskly across the Dartmouth campus, taking in every bit of scenery. The school was still new enough to be fascinating to Nita. Even this late in the evening, people still wandered to and fro. Around the dorms they were mostly students: carrying bags and books and chatting on cell phones and meeting other students.

Even with people out and about, Nita was able to find a darkened corner from which nobody would spy her. Her charm bracelet tinkled on her wrist, as she reached for a familiar charm and drew it out of the bracelet. She checked the values once and her name twice, then laid the line of Speech down onto the ground.

As she spoke the spell, the glowing letters lit up the brownbrick wall with silver shadows.

Nita’s shield did what the moon’s atmosphere – less than one hundred trillionth of earth’s – did not, filtering out the blazing warmth of a noon-high sun. A figure stood illuminated in white glare from the moon’s surface. Nita bounded towards Kit, waving until she reached him.

They hugged. Nita pecked Kit on the lips.

“How’s college?” Kit asked. His hands easily found her hips, his natural warmth adding to the sun’s rays.

“Fantastic,” Nita said. “I love my classes—well, except math.”

Kit laughed. “You’re good at math!”

Nita expressed her opinion by sticking her tongue through her teeth. “I’m not the one who took calculus last year.”

“Fair enough,” Kit said. He returned Nita’s peck on the lips. “How were the rest of your classes?”

“Good. I already know I’m going to love my English professor. How about you?”

“Great, great,” Kit said. “I started that Shakespeare class I was telling you about.”

“How exciting,” Nita said. And she was excited – it seemed like Kit had talked about nothing else, since he had received his schedule. “You’ll blow everyone away.”

Kit laughed. “We have to write a sonnet,” he said.

Nita groaned. “Seriously?”

Kit leaned back, feigning his hurt with a raised brow and a pouting lip. “What? I thought girls were supposed to love poetry.”

“Stick to wizardry. Poetry’s not your strong suit.”

Kit laughed. “Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;  
And yet methinks I have astronomy,  
But not to tell of good or evil luck,  
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;

Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,  
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,  
Or say with princes if it shall go well,  
By oft predict that I in heaven find:

But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,  
And, constant stars, in them I read such art  
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,  
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;

Or else of thee this I prognosticate:  
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.”

Nita rolled her eyes. “Well now you’re just cheating.”

“Okay, I didn’t write that one,” Kit admitted. “How’s everything else? How’s your roommate?”

“She seems nice enough,” Nita said. “She likes to read. We’re talking about buying a bookshelf for all the books we brought from home.”

“And all the ones you’re going to buy?”

Nita punched Kit’s arm. She didn’t refute his claim, however. Instead she said, “Shut up. How’s rooming with Raoul?”

“It’s good,” Kit said. “He keeps calling me Merlin, though. It’s getting kinda annoying, honestly.”

Nita snorted. After choosing to room with Raoul Eschemeling after his early graduation, Kit had made the difficult decision to reveal his wizardry. Raoul had taken it rather well, considering his friend had been hiding an entire aspect of his life.

Kit laughed, unconsciously scratching his neck. “Well, I guess he deserves a little bit of revenge,” he said. “Do you know if you’re going to tell your roommate?”

“No idea,” Nita said. “That’s not the kind of conversation you have during your first week, anyway.”

“Yeah, you’re right. You said she reads a lot? You think she’s a wizard?”

Nita shrugged. “If she is, well—there are no coincidences.”

As she said it, it felt vaguely prophetic.

\--

Kit arrived on the moon to find Nita already there, perched on a rock, textbook settled on her knee, a notebook lying on the rock beside her.  
He smiled and bounded over towards her.

“Hey, Neets,” he said. “Studying?”

Nita looked up from her textbook. “Oh,” she said. “Yeah.”

She looked down at the book, picked up the notebook and made a quick note. Then she looked up at Kit. “Sorry,” she said, looking legitimately apologetic. “I just—I missed a day of class because I had Errantry with Allison, and then I thought I’d make time but—I don’t know what happened. Finals.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Kit said. “School’s important. And I know the feeling.” Nita had suddenly been accosted with a plethora of new friends in college, and had trouble balancing schoolwork, and wizardry with her new partner.

 _New partner._

It felt strange to even think of it. Even when he and Nita had worked on separate assignments, they had never had separate partners. Of course, Nita’s roommate was closer to New Hampshire, and Kit had his own projects to work on.

 _You’re still her boyfriend,_ he thought. _And her best friend._

“Do you want to study together?” Nita asked, a smile curling at the edge of her lips. “There’s room on the rock.”

“Yeah, sure,” Kit said. He reached into his claudication, and drew out his book of Shakespeare. It was the only textbook he had with him, but he didn’t feel like designing a wizardry to bring his other books with him.

He sat next to Nita, and opened his book. Her back pressed into his, and he could feel the warmth radiating from her frame. He began to read.

For the next hour, neither of them spoke a word.

\--

Nita was early arriving at the meeting place. School was not yet in full swing, although she was quickly learning that Junior year would not be anything like the previous two. She looked around for any sign of Kit: he wasn’t there, and Nita hated that she was relieved.

She needed to think. Spying a large rock – where she and Kit had once sat and talked, watching the moon and the sun hang steadily in the sky above – Nita sat down, looked up at the stars, and made a very difficult decision.

When Kit arrived late, Nita was still perched on the rock. The moment his personal air bubble merged with hers, Kit said, “Sorry I’m late, I had—”

Nita’s wan smile stopped him up short.

“—a test to study for. What’s wrong, Neets?”

For a moment, Nita wanted to say nothing. She took a deep breath. Wizards did not lie to themselves, and she had already thought this through. She met his eyes.

“Kit,” she said. “I think we should break up.”

For a moment, Kit said nothing. Nita was caught between wanting him to speak and get it over with, and an intense desire for the moment to freeze as it was before he could respond. She trembled on her rock, suddenly chilled.

“Oh,” Kit said. And then he said, “Okay. Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Nita said. And then she amended her certainty. “Maybe?”

She looked down at her hands. Even when she heard Kit’s footsteps crunch over moon dust, she didn’t look up. Kit sat down on the rock beside her. They did not touch. Nita, suddenly and absurdly, wished that Kit would put his arm around her shoulder.

 _Stupid,_ she thought. _You’re breaking up with him._

Her eyes flickered across the canyon of inches between them.

“So what do you think?” The uncertainty in Nita’s voice shivered in their tiny air bubble, reminding her that they were probably the only life forms on the moon. She wondered if she should have asked Kit to go somewhere else for this conversation.

“Well,” Kit said, after a long pause. “I didn’t expect it.” A smile flashed across his face, sudden and wry.

“Yeah,” Nita said. “That’s what everyone will think. I’m pretty sure everyone’s still wondering when we’ll announce the wedding date.”

“Neets—“

“I was flirting with a boy earlier,” Nita said. “His name is Benjamin Dewayne. He’s nice—cute, you know. Intellectual type.”

Kit affected a casually disinterested look, and Nita realized that throwing the problem in his face wasn’t going to work. She sighed.

“I don’t think I want to date him,” Nita said. “Not really. He’s kind of a hipster.”

“I didn’t—I mean, it’s okay—“

It was Nita’s turn to smile wryly. “You’re great, Kit,” she said. “Really great. It’s okay to be jealous.”

Kit’s face twisted up: eyebrows bent, mouth askew. Nita thought that he was about to say something, but instead he closed his mouth.

Nita took a deep breath, not worrying about the air shield. She had brought a lot with her; she had anticipated a long conversation. “But that’s just the thing, isn’t it?” she said. “You’re amazing, and I really like you, but—what’s my basis for comparison? Sure there was Ronan, but that wasn’t really dating, and I was _fourteen_ , and all I really learned from that is I kinda like the rakish douchebag aesthetic more than I probably should. Neither of us have dated anyone else, and—and what if we’re missing out because of it? What if I did want to date Benjamin Dewayne or—or what if you wanted to date someone else, and we can’t because we’re dating each other?”

“Oh,” Kit said. And that was all he said, for a long while. And then he said: “You want to widen your data set. One is a pretty terrible sample population.”

Nita laughed in spite of herself.

“Sorry,” Kit said, laughing with her. “I spent all day with statistics.”

Nita sighed, pulling in her mirth. “That’s exactly what I mean,” she said. “How can we know we’re a good match, if we’ve only dated each other? Especially when—“

Nita had closed her mind off from Kit’s, but he still managed to know what he was thinking. He grimaced. “When we hardly even talk anymore,” he said.

Nita looked away from Kit, the misery of that reality welling up in her stomach and throat. “Yeah,” Nita said.

“Well,” Kit said, his voice heavy with the attempt to speak lightly. “I guess we go our separate ways then. We hardly talk anymore, and you want things that I can’t give you, and that’s hardly the way to be in a relationship, I suppose.”

“Yeah,” Nita said. She felt dizzy with lightheaded relief and simultaneously heavy, as though dragged down by sudden exhaustion. She forced a smile to her lips.

Kit smiled back, although it came slowly. “Friends?” he asked, unsure and uncertain.

“The best,” Nita said, without hesitation.

She and Kit hugged, and then parted. It was strange to say goodbye, and know that Kit was less a part of her life than he had been. She did not regret her decision: Kit had broached the subject she had been most dreading – that of their friendship – and as she spoke the spell to go home, she felt the lightness of freedom and relief.

But Nita still felt as though she had lost something in the bargain.

\--

Despite her promise of friendship, Nita did not see Kit again for another two months. She returned home from her talk on the moon, exhausted and miserable and happy and hating that she was, and fell into bed and cried herself out.

Life returned to normal quicker than she would have thought possible. She went to class, studied, worked on ongoing projects with Allison, who was no longer her roommate, but still her wizardly partner, and spent her free time reading or with friends. She asked Benjamin Dewayne on a coffee date and summarily declined others.

A time distortion appeared in the library that had several students missing for days. Nita and Allison fixed it, and staved off a schoolwide panic with the tricky application of a timeslide.

“I think,” Allison said, when the patch on the timeline seemed to be working with negligible ill effects, “that we deserve a break.”

Nita grinned. “But we’ve got midterms coming up,” she said, protesting in jest. She did not feel like she could manage any sort of studying at the moment.

“We didn’t actually lose any time with that job,” Allison said. “Timeslide patch, remember? So handy.”

Nita stuck her tongue out at Allison. “Where should we go?” she asked.

“Moon?” Allison suggested. “China? New Zealand? Or we could go see if your sister’s hot boyfriend is visiting.”

“Moon,” Nita said. “I think I need someplace quiet.”

Allison laughed. Nita grinned, and pulled the transport wizardry from her charm bracelet. It was an old and familiar spell, and over years of use had some of that worn and familiar feel in her hand – like a well-loved book.

She spread it out like it was a sheet she was placing over a bed, and Allison placed her name into the diagram. Together, they spoke the words.

Nita had designed the transport wizardry to the moon and connected it to her charm bracelet abstratus years ago, and she had seen no reason to change a spell that worked so well. The coordinates – as they always had been – were set to drop her at the old meeting spot she and Kit had used.

Just as he was using it now.

 _It’s not like you’re avoiding him,_ she thought.

Nita swallowed hard and looked down. Kit was not alone: he had one arm draped around the shoulder of a petite, dark-haired girl. Darryl was also there, and he was the first to see them.

From the distance between their air bubbles, she could see – if not hear – Darryl say, “Nita!” At the sound of that, Kit turned to look.

His eyes caught Nita’s, strangely guilty. Nita looked down, and bit her lip. Before she could decide if she wanted to talk to Kit right now, Darryl bounded over in his own air bubble.

“Hey, Darryl,” Nita said, with a genuine smile. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Kit and the unnamed girl wander closer. “How’s it been?”

“Good,” Darryl said. “We’re working a project on the rail lines. Dai stiho, cousin.” Without missing a beat, he turned to smile at Allison.

The curly-haired girl smiled and held out a hand. “Dai,” she said. “I’m Allison Pickett.”

“Darryl McAllister. This is Kit Rodriguez and Olivia Dianh.” He introduced the two as their own personal air bubbles merged with the rest. Kit, Nita noticed, had taken his arm from its perch on Olivia’s shoulders.

Olivia smiled and said, “Dai, cousins.”

Kit also managed a smile. “Hey, Neets.”

“Hi Kit.”

Olivia looked first at Nita and then at Kit, her eyes suddenly wide. “You know each other?”

“They’re, uhh,” Darryl said, before Nita stopped him by speaking. “We used to be partners, but I moved out of state for school.” She smiled, in a desperate attempt to seem cheerful, and floundered for a change in subject. “So, uhh, new girlfriend, Kit?”

If she’d had a list of terrible and awkward things to say upon chance meeting with an ex-boyfriend, she could hardly have done better.

Kit looked down guiltily. “Well, uhh,” he said. He looked back up at Nita. “We’ve been working on wizardry together, and then—“

Nita almost wanted to laugh – and then, absurdly, she wanted to cry as well. “Right,” she said. “Well, we’re gonna get going.”

Kit shifted his weight. “Yeah,” he said.

Darryl waved. “Bye, Nita!” he said. “You should visit more often!”

It was Nita’s turn to look guiltily at Kit. “Yeah,” she said. “I should do that.”

Allison already had the transport wizardry ready. Nita placed her name into it, checked over the wizardry, and then minutes later she and Allison were back on earth.

“What was _that_ about?” Allison asked, once she had rolled up the spell and stored it.

Nita flushed red. “That was, uhh.” She began to finger comb her hair out of nervousness. “My ex-boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Allison said. “So that’s the one you were visiting all the time? And now he’s got a new girlfriend? What a jerk.”

Nita’s fingers caught on a snarl in her hair. She tugged it out. “Well, that was kind of the idea,” she said. “That we see other people. It was my idea to break up anyway, and it’s been two months, it’s not like I expected him to pine forever—“

“Still weird though?”

Nita thought of Kit’s arm draped so casually around Olivia’s shoulders, and of the way he’d used to do that to her sometimes, when they were on a date or when they were tired after a long assignment or just when they wanted to sit together, thighs touching, her body curled into his.

“Yeah,” she said. “Still weird.”

\--

Nita’s graduation party was small, and held in the landscaped backyard of her Nassau County house. Her father was grilling burgers at the old grill for a number of guests – many of whom didn’t belong in this solar system, many more of whom were wizards.

Sker’ret – disguised as human for the day – was watching the cooking burgers with rapt attention even as he chatted with Nita’s dad. Tom and Carl both had sodas and plates for burgers, and were talking to Allison. Irina – having just stopped in for a quick chat – watched her toddler run amok through the backyard, simultaneously carrying on a conversation with Carmela and a disguised Filif. Dairine and Roshaun were half-obscured by the old rowan tree; Nita wasn’t sure if they were arguing or about to start making out, and didn’t really want to know.

Nita grinned – happy and tired and dizzy from all of the congratulations – and went inside to fetch condiments for the burgers. Just as she had finished stacking lettuce leaves, the pile of sliced tomato and onion, and the mustard and ketchup bottles on a tray, she heard the doorbell ring.

She set the tray down, rushed to the door, and wrenched it open.

It was Kit.

Nita’s heart beat sharply in her ears, and she took a deep breath. She had seen Kit only a sporadic few times over the past year. “Hey,” she said, breathless with both happiness and surprise. “It’s great to see you! I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”

“Yeah, well, I had to find some things,” Kit said. He looked down, and Nita noticed the wrapped package he had in his hands. “Plus, Mela wouldn’t stop giving me grief, so I didn’t want to walk down with her.”

“When does she ever stop giving you grief?”

Kit laughed, and Nita laughed too. She was almost surprised at how easy it was.

“Yeah,” Kit said. “But she kept making smoochy faces at me and—“ He blushed, and looked at Nita guiltily.

Nita took a deep breath, and frowned. This was never going to be easy. “Kit—“

“Yeah,” he said. “We need to talk, I know.”

Nita nodded. “You wanna set it up? I have a plate of condiments I’m supposed to bring out, and I should probably tell my dad if I’m gonna be awhile.”

Kit almost looked startled. “The moon?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Nita said. She smiled at Kit. “Back in a flash.”

She left him to setting up the wizardry, grabbed the tray from the kitchen, and brought it outside. It took only one quick word to her dad, and Nita was free to go – as long as she didn’t neglect her guests too long.

Kit already had the transport wizardry set up – it glittered in the growing dimness. Nita checked Kit’s work quickly. His name was different, she realized. Not by much, but a few syllables had changed. There was lead in Nita’s throat, as she looked at the characters in the Speech. She looked away, and quickly wrote out her own name to attach to the spell.

“Ready?” Kit asked, once he was done with his own check.

Nita looked up, and into Kit’s eyes. “Yeah,” she said.

They began to speak together. She had forgotten how easy it was to spell with Kit. They matched cadence perfectly, leaping into the spell, daring the other to say the words faster. The air around Nita began to listen, to sing its own song.

Her eyes were drawn to Kit. Caught up in the wizardry, the effervescent air pressed in around him, he looked as handsome as she had ever seen him. His hair – in need of a cutting – fell haphazardly across his forehead and over his dark and serious eyes. His light green polo shirt contrasted his sun-dark skin, highlighting his collarbones and strong arms.

Nita took a deep gulp of air, and finished the spell.

They stood on the surface of the moon. It was their usual meeting spot – Nita knew every rock, and could name a memory to go with each one. She smiled tentatively at Kit. “So,” she said, not sure how to begin the conversation.

Kit held out his wrapped package. “Here,” he said. “I got you this.”

Nita took the gift from his hands, and opened in slowly. It was a small and old shoebox. Nita reached in and drew out a smooth seashell.

“That’s from—when we went to the beach together,” Kit said. “I thought I’d bundle up things that reminded me of our friendship.”

Nita smiled at Kit, looking through the box. There was the gimbal they had used during their joint Ordeal, a rock from Mars with her father’s old cell phone number carved into it, and a small and plastic queen chess piece that had figured into one of their later exploits.

“This is great,” she said.

“Well I was thinking,” Kit said. “We haven’t really been—anything like friends lately—“

“We haven’t been talking lately,” Nita said. “I think we kind of royally screwed up our friendship.”

Kit laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess we did, kinda.”

Nita smiled, and looked back in the box. There was a small piece of lined notebook paper, folded up, its perforated edges still visible. She pulled it out.

“What’s this?” she asked, already beginning to unfold it.

Kit flushed a darker brown,. “Oh, that’s uhh—“

Nita was already reading the paper. Fourteen lines of what she suspected was iambic pentameter, finishing in a rhyming couplet. She laughed, and began to read it aloud.

“In shining air bejewel’d o’er with frost  
Where Sun in bitter Sky imparts no fire,  
And breath like fairy’s shroud suddenly lost  
To steam like kettle brewed upon the fire,

“When evergreen is bent with weight of snow  
Like weary men do bow at end of day,  
When river wild begins with ice to slow  
To wait in frozen sleep for hint of May,  
“My heart so cold like ice begins to crack

With pond’rous weight of glacier upon mount  
‘Tis poised to fall in water inky black  
That sea which no Sun’s light could hope surmount  
“I look into my heart and think of you

And thus recall my heart to spring anew—Kit, this is terrible,” she said, snorting her laughter. She looked up from the sonnet, at Kit. His mouth was curled into a grin. “No, this is really, really bad.”

“I thought you might miss my terrible sonneteering,” he said. “I wrote it for that class assignment, y’know—whenever it was I took that Shakespeare class.”

Nita smiled. She had missed Kit – his wry sense of humor, his easy smile, his steady presence. It felt good to laugh with him again. “Was it supposed to be to me?” she asked. It was out before she could check herself.

Kit paused. Then he said, “Yeah. You guessed it.”

Nita took a deep breath, and kept smiling, to smooth over the awkwardness. “You’d never win a girl over with this.” She grinned up at Kit. “Well, maybe if she thought your dorkiness was cute.”

Kit smiled, already flushed darker, and then said, “Did you think my dorkiness was—“

“Cute?” Nita finished for him, mirroring his flush. “Yeah I guess I kinda did. But let’s not—let’s not jump into that just yet?”

“Yeah,” Kit said. “You’re right.”

“Besides, what about—what was her name? From the moon?”

“Oh,” Kit said. “Olivia. We broke up—ehh, about this time last year. She’s in the Caribbean for an internship, now.”

“I see. And—anyone else?”

“Nothing serious,” Kit said with a shrug. “How about you? Are you dating anyone?”

His tone was light, but Nita glared at Kit and punched his arm. “Stop that,” she said, with a laugh. “I said we should hold off. Just because I’m not seeing anyone doesn’t change that.”

“All right, all right,” Kit said. “No more. Don’t worry.”

“And don’t you _dare_ try to win me over with more sonnets.”

“Absolutely not.”

Kit laughed. Nita laughed with him. Their mirth carried through their air bubble, filling it even long after it was gone and the two had fallen silent. Nita stared up at the familiar constellations, and sighed through her teeth.

“I’m glad,” she said, haltingly. “That you’re not mad at me.”

“It was awkward, but—you did what you needed to do. Of course I’m not mad.”

Nita grinned, her teeth flashing in the glare of the sun on the moon’s surface. “Friends?” she asked.

“The best,” Kit said.

“Good,” Nita said. “We should probably go back to the graduation party. Maybe we can still snag a hamburger – if Sker’ret hasn’t eaten them all.”

“No time to lose, then,” Kit said. He pulled out the transportation wizardry once again.

“And, hey,” Nita said, stepping into the spell diagram. “I’m in New York all summer. Do you want to, I don’t know, get lunch sometime?”

Kit grinned, and took Nita’s hand from across the spell. “Yeah,” he said. “We may as well grab a few. I’ve been holding down the fort here, but I’m sure there’s some place in New York that could use a Callahan-Rodriguez wizardly intervention.”


End file.
